Links to Consider, 5/2

Monday's conversation with Timothy B. Lee; Joe Lonsdale on fixing bad systems; Richard Hanania names his FITs; Noah Smith on Millenials' economic prospects; Inquisitive Bird on crime and power laws

Elijah Broadbent and I and other paid subscribers talked with Timothy B. Lee about GPT and LLM models.

Joe Lonsdale writes,

it is critical to understand that wokeness is a sideshow. The main event is our country’s long slide from being bold and adventurous to being dysfunctional and bureaucratic. When we see woke virtue signaling in institutions, we’re witnessing the aftermath of that decline.

He contrasts a decadent set of institutions that he calls the Core with what he calls the Frontier, where people either have to get stuff done or get out of the way. In his bracing essay, he embodies a can-do spirit, based on problem-solvers with skin in the game.

Our government agencies and NGOs usually benefit from attention to the problem they are supposed to solve. They have little incentive, or even negative incentive, to actually get rid of the problem.

I certainly agree with where he wants to go. And he has interesting ideas about how to get there. The difficult questions are how to work with/against the Core in order to get back to the Frontier.

Pointer from Erik Torenberg.

Richard Hanania writes about

individuals and groups who I think fall into the category of Enlightened Centrists. Each list is in alphabetical order to avoid distracting any reader who might be inclined to try and find patterns in the ordering.

Left: Peter Beinart, Jonathan Chait, Freddie deBoer, Michelle Goldberg, Ezra Klein, Peter Singer, Noah Smith, Matt Yglesias

Center/apolitical: Scott Alexander, Josh Barro, Patrick Collison, Jonathan Haidt, Steven Pinker, Progress Studies types, Nate Silver, Alec Stapp, Andrew Sullivan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Derek Thompson, Cathy Young

Right: GMU economics department, Tanner Greer, Sam Hammond, Anatoly Karlin, Emil Kirkegaard, Razib Khan, Megan McArdle, Virginia Postrel, Steve Sailer

When I had my Fantasy Intellectual Teams project, I used somewhat different criteria, but there is substantial overlap. Folks I listed in the “in my tribe” essay who are also on Hanania’s list: Yglesias, Alexander, Sullivan, McArdle, and implicitly Tyler Cowen and Bryan Caplan as members of the GMU economics department. I also would be happy to endorse Collison, Haidt, Pinker, Hammond, and especially Khan. Some of the people on his list I simply do not read often enough: Thompson, Young, Klein, and Goldberg usually write behind paywalls of The Atlantic and the NYT, respectively, to make a judgment.

Of people not on Hanania’s list, I would definitely want to include Rob Henderson. Zvi Mowshowtiz, Glenn Loury, John McWhorter, and Emily Oster.

Noah Smith writes,

in terms of both income and wealth, the story of the Millennials is that they got hurt by the Great Recession and swindled a bit by the student debt bubble, but now they’re doing OK. Most of them will not be trapped in downward mobility or have to work until they’re 80. Economically, they will largely resemble the generations of Americans that came before them.

But politically, they are still stuck on stupid. And this relates to their aversion to having children.

what really matters for politics is probably not the number of kids that get born, but the number of people who end up having any kids at all. The future of Millennial politics may depend on whether increased incomes, homeownership, and wealth make Millennials feel comfortable having children.

Inquisitive Bird writes,

approximately half of violent crime convictions were committed by people who already had 3 or more violent crime convictions. In other words, if after being convicted of 3 violent crimes people were prevented from further offending, half of violent crime convictions would have been avoided.

Putting criminals in prison causes harm to them, and we seem to want to avoid doing that. But the harm that criminals do is a problem. Charles Fain Lehman argues for “more cops, faster courts, better prisons.”

It occurs to me that there might be great social benefit if technology could be used to restrain criminal behavior of people that we are reluctant to send to prison. That is, if someone is convicted of a crime, instead of giving him a prison term or letting him go free, you make him wear a device that enables him to be tracked and restrained from committing another crime.

But be careful what you wish for. If such a device works well, it will be tempting for government to put it on everyone.

Substacks referenced above:

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The criminal justice system doesn’t do enough to make us safe

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When few do great harm

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Will there be a Millennial Big Chill?

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Towards an Enlightened Centrism

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Why Liberalism Leads to a Big State

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To Save America, Restore Our Frontier